Merculet ICO Review And MVP Token Analysis

Eyes on the prize... consumer attention is hard to get, and harder to keep.

Merculet ICO Overview

The Merculet ICO and MVP Token offer a new protocol suite that leverages blockchain to capture and monetize consumer attention. The product Merculet offers is designed specifically to address the difficulty faced by enterprises at all levels to acquire new users. Through the creation of an interface that provides incentives for users to engage with new content, Merculet aim to address the difficult process of acquiring new customers and disrupt the current b2c relationship paradigm.

Merculet ICO Value Proposition

Merculet is predicated on the idea that decreasing consumer attention leads to a loss for both businesses and consumers alike. The team are building their protocol to evaluate, incentivize and ultimately capture consumer attention for the benefit of businesses who utilize the product.

UAT (User Attention Token): the attention incentive system of Merculet allows participating enterprises to issue UAT to users based on the UAV value assessment. The UAT is anchored to the MVP (Merculet Value Protocol) token. Businesses can integrate into this system and assign their own value of UAT denominated in MVP tokens.

Open Content Platform: the platform is the main interface for the promotion and production of content on Merculet. The platform provides the means by which consumers, enterprises, content creators and advertisers can interact and exchange value.

The Merculet Value Protocol (ERC-20) token is the underlying means of value exchange for consumers and businesses. Consumers can receive rewards in either the underlying MVP or UAT tokens (denominated in MVP) based on the value of their attention. Businesses are also rewarded with MVP for utilizing content from the Open Content Platform and allowing their own advertising system to support the consumption of MVP. Users of Merculet are able to stake MVP for reputation as well.

Merculet ICO Team

Ivan Jiang (Founder and CEO) – Ivan has 12 years of experience in software engineering and leadership in tech companies. His previous roles include VP of Engineering at Ad Master Digital Marketing and as a Software Engineer with both SAP Success Factors and HP. He previously founded Magic Window, an intelligent digital advertisement distributor, before moving on with a number of team members to Merculet. Shen Jun Zhang (CTO) – Shen Jun has 12 years of experience with software engineering and has also come over from Magic Window, where he served as Co-Founder and CTO. Previously, he served as Associate Principal Engineer with EMC and as Engineering Director with Ad Master Digital Marketing. Jerry Gao (CPO) – Jerry has 15 years of experience with UI/UX development. He most recently served as CPO at Magic Window before joining Merculet. He also worked alongside Shen Jun and Ivan at Ad Master and Magic Window as a frontend developer before joining Merculet. Advisors to the project include Roger Lim of Neo Global Capital, Shen Bo of BitShares and Fenbushi Capital, Shou Cheng Zhang of Danhua Capital, Yue Feng Qiu of Roots Capital, Iris Yin of Super Hash Capital, and Bin Sen Tang of ELEX.

For more information on the 10 member team and list of advisors please visit the Merculet homepage.

Merculet ICO Strengths and Opportunities

Merculet have designed their protocol suite to appeal to both consumers and enterprise users alike. Consumers will be able to earn rewards through running the protocol and interacting with the content provided by enterprise users of the platform.

From the enterprise angle, the Merculet suite includes all the protocols and templates that enable companies to quickly onboard token-based operations. Merculet focus on the idea of “unattended operation” as a crucial design principle, which allows the suite to manage the deployment of the complex architecture with minimal effort from enterprise perspective. Ideally, companies with little blockchain knowledge will be more inclined to deploy the protocol through this design.

Merculet ICO Weaknesses and Threats

Merculet have provided an article on Medium that introduces the enterprise UI via several videos and screenshots. They have also provided a link to their GitHub, which at present is nearly empty. While the process of onboarding for enterprises seems relatively straightforward to those who are familiar with blockchain, deeper questions remain regarding consumer adoption and conversely, enterprise interest in the product.

Participation on Merculet will rely on a number of factors, such as which companies choose to adopt the protocol and the level of interest from consumers to engage with these companies via the platform. So far, Merculet have partnered with Chinese game app company ELEX and Solo Ads, an ad recommendation provider for mobile phones.

But for this type of product to reach mass adoption, Merculet will have to onboard a multitude of large-scale enterprises that can attract a significant userbase. Without large-scale enterprises to offer content, there will be no consumer incentive to participate on the platform. Without a significant consumer base utilizing the platform, the task of onboarding enterprises becomes all the more difficult. The Merculet ICO team have yet to elaborate on how they will address this issue.

In addition, there is at present no product demonstration of what the consumer experience will look like and how interaction with content will occur. These questions are fundamental to ascertaining the potential of the project and loom large over the future of the Merculet ICO.

The Verdict on Merculet ICO

While the issue of capturing consumer attention is an increasingly pertinent issue for enterprises, we are not sure a decentralized platform based on tokenized incentivization represents the solution.

At this stage in the development and adoption of blockchain technology, the Merculet ICO is treading into highly speculative territory. Without a product demo to get an idea of what the end user experience will feel like and little information on adoption strategies, we are not confident enough to place a bet on this project.

What Would Change our Minds?

An example of a successful ecosystem predicated on a similar model. There are many planned projects which will launch similar platforms that reward consumer attention. The appeal of this framework to both enterprises and consumers is largely untested

A working prototype that would demonstrate how users interact with content via the Open Content Platform. As of right now, the whole user experience on the platform remains a vague concept that necessitates, above all else, a simple example to give potential investors an idea of what they are actually investing in.

A roadmap to adoption that is backed up with efforts to onboard successful enterprises. At this stage, it’s unrealistic to expect large-scale enterprises to be flocking to the platform. But at the same time, the Merculet ICO hasn’t made public any efforts to pitch their product to big industry players or laid out a concrete strategy for doing so.

Learn more about the Merculet ICO from our Telegram Community by clickinghere.

Merculet ICO Review Scores

Summary

The Merculet ICO (MVP Token) wants to monetize the concept of consumer attention, which is something advertising agencies have been striving to do for decades. Their novel approach has attracted some big name advisors and a couple of customer commitments. But this notoriously two-sided market means massive scaling on the consumer side in order for enterprises to demonstrate interest... and they will do so when the enterprises are using the platform. Few companies emerge from these markets unscathed, and we don't yet see a clear plan to address the dilemma.

The Merculet ICO (MVP Token) wants to monetize the concept of consumer attention, which is something advertising agencies have been striving to do for decades. Their novel approach has attracted some big name advisors and a couple of customer commitments. But this notoriously two-sided market means massive scaling on the consumer side in order for enterprises to demonstrate interest… and they will do so when the enterprises are using the platform. Few companies emerge from these markets unscathed, and we don’t yet see a clear plan to address it.

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Poor quality, weak, or inexperienced leadership can doom a project from the outset. Advisors who serve only to pad their own resumes and who have ill-defined roles can be concerning. But great leadership, with relevant industry experience and contacts, can make the difference between a successful and profitable ICO, and a flub.

If you don’t have a team willing and able to build the thing, it won’t matter who is at the helm. Good talent is hard to find. Developer profiles should be scrutinized to ensure that they have a proven history of working in a field where they should be able to succeed.

What is the technology behind this ICO, what product are they creating, and is it new, innovative, different – and needed?

The IOTA project is a spectacular example of engineers run amok. The technology described or in use must be maintainable, achievable, and realistic, otherwise the risk of it never coming into existence is incredibly high.

Tokens which have no actual use case are probably the worst off, although speculation can still make them have some form of value.

The best tokens we review are the ones that have a forced use case – you must have this token to play in some game that you will probably desire to play in. The very best utility tokens are the ones which put the token holder in the position of supplying tokens to businesses who would be able to effectively make use of the platforms in question.

There doesn’t have to be a market in order for an ICO to score well in this category – but if it intends to create one, the argument has to be extremely compelling.

If there is an existing market, questions here involve whether it is ripe for disruption, whether the technology enables something better, cheaper, or faster (for example) than existing solutions, and whether the market is historically amenable to new ideas.

Most ideas have several implementations. If there are others in the same field, the analyst needs to ensure that the others don’t have obvious advantages over the company in question.

Moreover, this is the place where the analyst should identify any potential weaknesses in the company’s position moving forward. For instance, a fundamental weakness in the STORJ system is that the token is not required for purchasing storage.

With many ICO ideas, the timing may be too late or too early. It’s important for the analyst to consider how much demand there is for the product in question. While the IPO boom funded a lot of great ideas that eventually did come to fruition, a good analyst would recognize when an idea is too early, too late, or just right.

Some of the least compelling ICO propositions are those that claim their founders will achieve some far-off goal, sometime in the future, just so long as they have your cash with which to do it.

More interesting (usually) is the ICO that seeks to further some progress along the path to success, and which has a clearly-identified roadmap with achievable and reasonable milestones along the way. Founders who are already partially-invested in their products are generally more invested in their futures.

Having a strong community is one of the fundamental building blocks of any strong blockchain project. It is important that the project demonstrates early on that it is able to generate and build a strong and empowered support base.

The ICO marketplace is becoming more crowded and more competitive. While in the past it was enough to merely announce an offering, today’s successful ICO’s work hard to build awareness and excitement around their offering.

One of the biggest factors weighing any analysis is price. The lower the price the more there is to gain. But too low of a price may result in an under capitalized project. It is therefore important to evaluate price relative to the individual project, its maturity and the market it is going after.

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